Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2016 3:40:27 GMT -5

What happens when the organized tournament holders go by Blizzard's rules.Insane hero stacking. Compositions of 2/2/2 of the same heroes and then 5 Tracers in KOTH just constantly tapping the point to keep Overtime going until they can break the enemy off of it with Pulse bombs.Horrendously long KOTH matches because of the 3/5 rounds and the overtime extension.Hanamura, Anubis and Volskaya being avoided like the plague because of their cruddy design... but now comp teams having to pick and choose which plague they want to avoid, 2CP or KOTH.

And after a month of progress...The new meta seems to lean on healers/tanks that can also do damage, effectively putting many damage dealers out of work.

i assume those stats are based on Steam? Any chance of finding data on Xbox? I ask because I think squishy characters like Zen and Lucio are even MOAR powerful because they're much harder to kill since aiming is much tougher on console

Post by tiesieman on Aug 11, 2016 11:17:31 GMT -5

Theres a lot of genji because he and zen fit like how pharah and mercy fit together. put the orb on the guy, discord some people and gengu goes ham. Zen and lucio dictate the entire meta which is also why we see Zarya (who is decent against Zen and her ult is stupid). Cant imagine zen and lucio coming off unscathed next balance patch, even if the average overwatch player has a soft spot for supports

ana is legit good though, she's just not stupid level like lucio and zen

Post by Den on Aug 17, 2016 20:46:48 GMT -5

They reverted the hitbox changes on the PTR again. Blizzard, whatre you even doing?

That's good. As they said, the big hitboxes were a design choice for balance. The change caused very obvious, negative effects.They shouldn't have kowtowed to the crying about it, or perhaps they did so to show everyone just how much some characters get screwed over compared to others when the boxes are cropped to the models of dramatically varying size.

Post by qupie on Aug 18, 2016 8:19:20 GMT -5

Hitboxes were bigger than character models in overwatch on release. (this means that if you slightly missed your oponent, you would still get a hit)

Players were upset by this, as it is seen as "cheap, generous, unskillful and sloppy design, bla bla bla we want high skill ceilings because we are all pro". Once this hanzo thing got out though, it became a heated topic, even though this will probably almost never happen in game (it could also be done with other heroes btw, but as hanzo has such high damage on headshots it is by far the most infuriating one).

After this, Blizzard gave in and made the hitboxes smaller, but this screwed with the balance in the game. (You can imagine it is a way bigger buff for the small and nimble tracer model compared to the slow huge roadhog model for example, or just imagine how useless Hanzo is right now without the help from bigger hitboxes).

So now, they are thinking about changing it back, even though players might say it is "cheap, generous, unskillful and sloppy design" once again. I hope players can see that this is not a normal FPS game, and with all the different character models and mobility options, this is what is needed to balance it all out. I do hope though that they avoid the Hanzo thing, just keep the hitboxes this size but do a simple LOS check or something, even if only to keep the pitchforks away.

Post by LeGitBeeSting on Aug 18, 2016 13:59:27 GMT -5

I've had icicles on frozen dudes miss while playing mei and im not thát bad

He says this while playing Mei.

Mei is not bei.

Regarding the hitbox thing it is lazy in game like OW as character size is clearly a balance factor. If they wanted a character's hit box twice their size they should of designed a character twice their size rather than making the hit box twice as large as said character. Large hitboxes off launch felt tacked on when they clearly had size in mind when creating the game.

Post by qupie on Aug 22, 2016 4:12:02 GMT -5

ill say again i really dont like the argument that "it was initially balanced that way" because the game was initially balanced like shit. And theres no real evidence that it was significantly detrimental to the game unless they try it out without discord being as strong as it is.

I mean i guess i can see making them back to what they were on console but there are plenty of people who dont want to be at the mercy of players who literally need an aimbot to function.

And while being able to hit people you cant see is bad, id say the same for when i can miss someone by a whole body width and be given a hit anyway. It may not be a "traditional shooter" but it is still a shooter and if there was so little value in aiming then they would have made another shitt moba.

I really can't see how you can say the game was balanced like shit. We might be used to different games in the past, but imho it is one of the most balanced games around compared with what I played in the past (COD, TitanFall, Destiny, Paragon). I am not really a moba player where balance might be better, but to me, having so much completely different characters and having at least 10 of them being competitively viable and almost all of them viable in casual games is a huge success.

You clearly haven't played a lot on console though. I think the skill gap between a new player and pro is just as big on console as it is on pc. Sure there is aim assist, but it is not as if aiming is easy, especially in overwatch.

I can see that making the whole character model bigger might be fairer compared to only bigger hitboxes, but it isn't the same thing balance wise. There is a lot more tuning on hitboxes compared to the complete character model. Also, changing the character model over and over with initial balancing seems weird and a huge waste of time.

Post by blackbarney on Aug 22, 2016 10:25:57 GMT -5

When does season 2 of Competitive start? I pulled off a rank 60 but my buddy (who is much better than me) is hovering just over 50. Before matchmaking would allow you to group up with anyone within...30 I think of your rank. But it sounds like they're changing that to 10?! Does that mean if my buddy and I drift to an 11 difference in rank, we won't be able to play together?

Post by qupie on Aug 22, 2016 10:26:10 GMT -5

I agree that making multiple changes at once is not the smartest move. We will see how that goes. I think they do things to the extreme in PTR's, see how much of it is too much, and then take some of it back. (like with the Zen buff, which is still too much but at least they lowered his damage compared to previous PTR).

I like to be concerned with both the competitive and casual balance, and I agree that it is pretty hard to be perfect where the game is right now. But it is still far from shit if you ask me. There is not a single competitive game where everything is viable as far as I know, and 1/4-1/2 of the content being viable is pretty good if you ask me.

For consoles, Overwatch is by far the hardest game to aim in I have ever encountered, and there are a lot of players who agree. As long as cross-play isn't a thing (which hopefully never happens for FPS), it shouldn't really be an issue anyway. I agree that separate balancing is a good thing, and hopefully they will do something like that with the hitboxes. But even on PC, I can see a slight change in the meta, Tracer, Genji and their counter Winston has come out to play a lot more in tournaments lately and one tank builds have been more common lately. Which are at least partial to Zenyatta changes, but I think the hitboxes also play a role there.

Post by tiesieman on Aug 22, 2016 13:30:29 GMT -5

I hear there's alot of people who can't play with friends in the PTR due to the 500 limit and the way you as a player get calibrated in your placement matches. Supports get shafted during calibration (it's much harder to record a supports impact statistically aside from healing, its a pretty common issue with many games with these archtypes), so people who play their placement matches together may end up more than 500 rating apart. I suspect either or even both calibration and the skill disparity allowed are gonna get tweaked

reeeeally hope patch doesnt get pushed through like this. Don't like how Tjorbi and Bastion went untouched and Hanzo is stupid (probably less of an issue on console)

In fact on Console I think Pharahs gonna be scary again with discord nerfed

Post by qupie on Aug 23, 2016 2:54:22 GMT -5

I think Hanzo might even become a bigger problem on console compared to PC, at least on the spamming part. I don't how big the increased arrow speed is though. Imho they should make it comparable to Zenyatta to get rid of the "Spamzo"meta. If he becomes too strong with that, he should get nerfed elsewere.

Right now the right way of playing Hanzo seems to be constantly shooting (at choke points or visible enemies) after the match has started, which is dumb. I think it really boils down to the no reload + slow travel time, and I feel at least one of them has to go to get him balanced/less spammy.